Suddenlink vandals strike in Northern California again; service out for 10,000 in fifth attack since March

For the fifth time in just over a month, vandals sliced through Suddenlink's fiber optic cable early Wednesday, leaving thousands of North Coast customers without telephone, cable and Internet services across areas of Arcata, McKinleyville, Trinidad, Sunny Brae, Bayside and Big Lagoon.

The incident occurred around 1 a.m. in the area of Lorenz Lane and Old Arcata Road in Bayside, and caused an estimated $25,000 in damage. According to a Humboldt County Sheriff's Office press release, a culvert pipe was used to access the elevated cable.

The latest cut is similar to recent vandalism acts in Ferndale, Trinidad and Bayside where someone broke into underground vaults and cut lengths of fiber optic cable. The sheriff's office is estimating the total damage from the five cuts that began March 8 is believed to be at least $75,000.

Suddenlink Operations Manager Wendy Purnell said that all of the incidents appear to be related. Suddenlink is offering a $10,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for the crimes.

"Enough is enough," Purnell stated in a press release. "We continue to work actively with local law enforcement to put a stop to these crimes."

Persons of interest have been interviewed, but no official suspects, motivations or leads were available by press deadline, Sheriff's Office Lt. Steve Knight said.

"We are not ruling anything out at this point," Knight said. "The sheriff's office is utilizing all available investigative resources to try and solve this."

Those affected by Wednesday's outage included the Arcata Police Department and Mad River Community Hospital.

APD Sgt. Todd Dokweiler said Wednesday morning that residents who lost telephone service might have experienced delays if calling emergency services.

"Because some of the phone systems are affected, if you call 911 on a cell phone, it will be transferred to Eureka and they will notify us," Dokweiler said. "Someone will answer and an officer will respond, but it could be delayed due to that transfer. We just want people to know that."

Dokweiler said while the department was without Internet, dispatch lines were operating. Officers were on regular patrols in the affected areas, he said.

"It's pretty much business as usual for us," he said. "Most folks have the ability to use their cellular phone."

Mad River Community Hospital spokeswoman Vicky Sleight said the hospital did not have Internet access on Wednesday.

"Well, we are certainly tired of it," Sleight said. "But it is really not a big deal for us."

Connecting to the Internet or sending emails to people outside of the hospital was cut off, she said.

"Our employees can still communicate within the hospital -- we have our own server -- they just can't go out and Google things," she said.

Purnell said on-site technicians worked through the day on the damaged line to restore service to customers. Residents of Trinidad and Sunny Brae reported having service back up by the afternoon.

According to Purnell, as of 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, services had been restored to over 80 percent of affected customers and Suddenlink was working to restore services to all remaining customers Wednesday night.

The sheriff's office asks anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity to call Detective Kirkpatrick of the Sheriff's Criminal Investigations Division at 268-3640, or the sheriff's office crime tip line at 268-2539.